Handsome Waddie

by jkatejohnston

9 October 2014

Dear Max,

What if my diary dies of neglect? No, no, dear diary, you shall not be dead!

Colin thrives, he goes by Waddie, and he and Teresa are in love. He seems to like me and Enzo all right too, though he still barks at me when I come home from work, but his true love is Teresa. Yesterday I walked Waddie to Gunther’s for ice cream—he didn’t get any, sad to say—and Teresa and Enzo met us there. Enzo gets ice cream after the dentist, even if they don’t do any work on him. Afterward, Teresa drove home, and Enzo and I walked Waddie home, and he kept stopping and turning and looking back for Teresa: that brown-eyed worried gaze.

Another picture: Enzo and Teresa tossing one of Waddie’s chew toys back and forth, high over his head, while he rises up on his hind legs, does a little doggie pirouette, and snatches it out of the air, and sometimes even four-off-the-floor which totally cracks Enzo up. He laughs until his little brown eyes disappear. And to think, on the shelter website, Waddie’s doggie description said he didn’t know how to play with toys; they weren’t part of his growing up. (Poor Waddie! Lucky Waddie!)

Or Waddie and Enzo playing tug-of-war with a squeaky stuffed alligator, and the time Waddie let go and Enzo ended up on the floor. They’re pretty evenly matched. Teresa took them to the pet store and weighed them both. We don’t have a scale—and Enzo’s always wanting to know how big he’s getting. Waddie 63, Enzo 61. Enzo was pretty disappointed that he’d lost a pound.

Just to show how far gone we are: we did a doggie DNA test, and it’s a good thing Enzo already loves Waddie a lot because he’s not a Golden Retriever mix. He has no Golden at all, and Enzo was dying for a Goldie. One of his parents was Swiss Shepherd and Great Dane, and the other was an Alaskan Malamute mix. All this sounds very Frankenstein, so I’ll include a picture here to show that it all came together harmoniously. The golden coat comes from the Swiss Shepherd which is a white German Shepherd that can sometimes be “biscuits and cream,” such a delicious color. Anyway, here’s what he looks like. (Handsome Waddie!)